Monday, August 11, 2008

Twin Prime Conjecture

A "Conjecture" is a big fancy word for a "guess", usually for something that is probably true without a proof. The Twin Prime Conjecture is one of these oldest guesses ever known. A twin prime are two numbers with difference of 2 that are both primes. For example, 3 and 5, 11 and 13, 41 and 43, etc.

The guess is: is there infinitely many such pairs?

This is one of those simple-to-state, but hard-to-prove-or-disprove statement.

Euclid already proved that there are infinitely many primes (with a remarkable proof by contradiction). Chances are: there are infinitely many twin primes, but no one can say for certain.

Dry and boring you say? I found a great entertaining song!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3302/02.html

If presented right, math can even be an entertaining subject!

What does it matter if there are infinite or finitely many twin primes? Answer: Curiousity demands answers.

Hmm, let me start with the similar fashion as Euclid: let p and p+2 be the last set of twin primes... if I can find another set of twin primes beyond that, or another contradiction then I've got it!

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